Internally displaced due to impact of climate change

Ali Gul Rind

MITHI, THARPARKAR: Due to non-productivity of fodder in Thar Desert in 2015, Jaitmaal Singh, a native of Haryar village is considering to move. Since whatever little resources he had have gone to waste, he has nothing to lose.

District Tharparkar covering 22,000 square kilometres in Sindh is witnessing yet another drought in 2015.

Singh says in times of no rain, along with his livestock, he moves to barrage areas.

“In barrage areas we reap our wheat and sugar canes crops, and also work in filed on landlords.”

But after hearing of rains in Tharparkar, families along with their earnings and belongings turn to their fields.

Millets and other beans are cultivated in the rain-fed cultivation land.

People save seeds for cultivation but for the last four years due to continuous drought, most of the seeds were consumed, and the indigenous seeds are no more.

Shahabuddin Nohriyo, a district resident, told TNN that during droughts around sixty per cent of the population migrates to other areas, where climate is favourable for agricultural growth such that they could earn livelihoods for themselves and find enough fodder for their livestock.

“Education of children is badly affected. Parents engage their children in labour wherever they go,” he says. “Even after coming back to their village the children remain engaged in farming activities.”

Shahzadi Tunio, senior manager of WWF-Pakistan says drought in Thar for the last 25 years is a result of climate change.